Third option

Is it time to introduce the third option. An idea for 8 years of the game. If you do not want to introduce as a starting point then as a reward for players who start again, after level 16. The opinion of the players is ..

Comments

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    You had the third option since the beginning: not playing.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think a 3rd faction would be interesting, especially in lakes controlled by 1 faction as there will always be people who would jump to a neutral (at the time) team is they don't like how their team operates. But I dont think its possible without completely revamping the game, and fro what I've seen, nobody liked the last time that happened when it went to prime

  • We don't have sufficient numbers to actively manage two factions any more.

    A third would be simply the trolls and cheats, and those who've been ostracized by both teams for their behavior.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    In some areas a third faction would very likely lead to two of the factions forming some sort of alliance and ganging up against the third. I don't think that would make for a good game mechanic.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Isn't this game about alliances and community gameplay? How what you described isn't a good mechanic?

    The fanaticism is what isn't good. Sometimes the community can became toxic with it's custom rules and directives, because the blind fanatics who takes the leadering positions. A third option would help fighting this behavior in some areas, but I would not just add a new factions for everyone, this is something (if it was up to me) I would release only for recursed agents, so you the agent ever feel like it's time to became a rebel, he can just rush up lv16.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Hydracyan The game is about alliances within a team. Allying yourself with the other team is generally frowned upon and is often considered win trading. Having two teams of players bullying a third team would probably have some very bad outcomes.

    At this point it would also lead to an unbalanced game. If the game was initially designed for three factions then the mechanic could have been worked in but creating a red faction now would mean that the new faction had few players and resources compared with the two existing ones. There would be an imbalance in Ada/Jarvis/Klue (or whatever) viruses. The red faction would be at a disadvantage when it came to durable portal ownership and access, internal team resources like intel and planning, etc.

  • NysyrNysyr ✭✭✭✭

    It didn't work in Pokemon Go, it won't work in Ingress.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    I have the feeling that Niantic might remove factions, effectively leaving u with "one" faction against the exogenous and dark xm (as it was intended).

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2020

    Oh god, having just one faction would be dreadful. Ingress is fundamentally PvP. It would be abysmal as PvE.

    Post edited by Hosette on
  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    but spoofers still continue to be a problem and multi accounts etc that destroy for legit players... a wild idea but who knows

  • K4PNK4PN ✭✭

    (refloating... *blop*)

    Looking for a simple development of this idea: it could be a faction that plays in both factions depending on the cycle, simply by marking the name with a different color it would be known that it is a RED agent.

    Working a little more on the idea... a new faction could be created formally and compete with the current ones, being attacked by both at the same time and the RED faction could use one of them according to the cycle (in addition to their own portals), to build and earn MUs, using tools like new MODs that alter the state of a portal (like viruses).

    It could compensate for the difficulty of being RED with higher AP gain for example.

    Sure there are many deficiencies in what I say, but it is a matter of Niantic working on it :P

    I like the idea!

  • grendelwulfgrendelwulf ✭✭✭✭✭

    There should be five factions with rotating alliances and alignments dependent on the phases of the moon.

  • @K4PN

    Looking for a simple development of this idea: it could be a faction that plays in both factions depending on the cycle, simply by marking the name with a different color it would be known that it is a RED agent.

    But why?

    The most common reason for floating "new faction", is disagreement within factions. Which if, you can't resolve in one faction, a group comprised of all the outcasts is really likely to be even less able to integrate.

    It could compensate for the difficulty of being RED with higher AP gain for example.

    That's ridiculous, given that both factions are also attacking each other, so you'd be no worse off...

  • GrukzGrukz ✭✭

    It actually worked for pogo. There is no my faction good, your faction bad attitude at least in my area. I think pogo would have been much more toxic if it was only two like ingress.


    The third faction option gave people to choose an underdog faction in their area and have fun.


    Most players don't even remembers faction of every pogo player they play with. 3 faction is working really well there. Most people only consider the colour. No crazy ideologies or hate to other factions.

  • edited March 2021

    Most players don't even remembers faction of every pogo player they play with. 

    This is why the comparison is pointless.

    PoGo's factions don't matter. Ingress factions define much of the gameplay. PoGo could have gone with no factions like HPWU and it wouldn't have fundamentally changed much of the gameplay except gym ownership to coins.

    If the same logic was applied to Ingress, it would have folded years ago, because of all the win trading.

  • GrukzGrukz ✭✭
    edited March 2021

    Yes. 3 factions would be nice. Young pogo players coming to ingress is not that liked by old guys who only play ingress.

    Most pogo players here play solo for level up and fun. A PoGo player faction would be nice. They can microfield, derp link and annoy the old guys of both faction.

    The coordination would be nice too since pogo players from multiple teams don't hate each other over team colour.


    I am Just joking. As much I wouid love a new faction to join to have fun it's not feasible now.

    The player base is way to low now. We have less than 100 people in a state wide faction chat (This is the weaker faction here, not sure about the number of other faction) in a state with population of 34 million.

  • GrukzGrukz ✭✭
    edited March 2021

    Yes. The core of ingress is faction fight but the problem is its crazy toxic in many areas due to this duality.


    I think a third faction could in theory reduce toxicity if wintrade or cooperating is avoided.

    I am just microfield, destroy stuff and enjoy player. If the player base was high, I think it would be it be fun to join underdog faction and fight the big 2.

    But anyway they should have added it before. Player base is too low now for 3 faction to be successful now.

    Even though I mostly play solo some interaction with fellow faction player now and then is nice and 3rd faction in current situation will make things worse.

    I wish ingress had more players. So much potential for fun. Love the low spoofer headache and and a working report system onlike pogo.

    I have not attended anomaly or other stuff like that so I don't don't know how an another faction would affect them. Just giving solo player point of view opinion.

    Post edited by Grukz on
  • edited March 2021

    I think a third faction could in theory reduce toxocity if wintrade or cooperating is avoided.

    This does not gel with any psychological study from history. Tribalism isn't improved by having more tribes. Quite the opposite.

    Reducing toxicity in any competitive environment is mainly achieved by humanizing your competition. Cross-factional relationships that focus on the similarities between people instead of the differences. Reminders that it's a game and at the end of the day we're all a bunch of nerds playing secret agent on our phones.

    Cross fac channels that start out with things like "Star Trek vs Star Wars" instead of "Green vs Blue".

    Additional factions won't change inter-factional toxicity. It'll literally just create more drama. If that's the problem that this is suppose to solve, it'll have the opposite effect.

    PoGo works because there's little or no competition, and benefits to ignoring team boundaries with no penalties. It's not a concept that will work in Ingress.

    Post edited by Perringaiden on
  • GorillaSapiensGorillaSapiens ✭✭✭✭✭

    There is a 3rd option. Go grey. destroy, but don't deploy.

    as a side note; the greys currently are in the lead, holding 75% of all portals...

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @GorillaSapiens Grey faction is also known as "Hosette Faction". (-:

    There was a long period of time where I carried 20 R8s and 20 R7s for emergencies and no other resonators because I wanted room for as many X8s as possible. Every night I would level anything owned by my opponents in the downtown area of my city and leave a giant sea of grey. It's how I got onyx purifier before platinum builder, and double onyx purifier before onyx builder.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think Nemesis was an attempt to humanize the environment. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yet, a lot of people did not enjoy the cross-factional gameplay.

  • edited March 2021

    Oh, I totally don't mean "Play nice to each other". Play hard, blow each other's stuff up, but recognize that everyone is just playing a game. Having your stuff blown up is an opportunity to rebuild, gain some AP, and generally play the game etc.

    Trying to make factions "work together" often causes more drama than playing against each other, because it's an external force trying to generate something that's antithetical to the game's premise.

    But it's still a game, played by normal people, with similar views, who just happened to pick different colors.

    You don't see NBA teams in all out brawls once they leave the field.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    When the playing field is the world - it's hard to "leave it"

  • kiloecholimakiloecholima ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021

    I wouldn't support a red faction as a third equal faction. However, I'd be interested if there were a more limited role. Perhaps a superpower that comes with recursion where you can opt into and out of a "red phase." There would be a timer, you would be temporarily "red" but also still aligned with your own faction with an ability to switch back and forth as necessary. Going red would give you abilities such as killing blocking links from your own faction rather than having to use a virus, or knocking off old mods that are no longer useful to you and replacing them with new mods. In theory, you could also just **** all of your own stuff and rebuild it if you're bored living in an area with no competition. Perhaps it would even come with the ability to infect the other team's portals such as deploying resonators on an enemy anchor and ciphoning off MU from their score.

  • As far as a 3rd faction I always thought it would be interesting if it was sort of a NPC faction.

    Not necessarily a faction that could take "spoof" portals randomly, but maybe a "virus" could infect a player and give them tasks to complete to "cure" themselves.

    The tasks could be simple but could switch players to a faction that could destroy both sides. And interact with both sidesm

    Tasks like

    -destroy 25 resistance resonators

    -destroy 25 enlightend resonators

    -deploy on 10 portals

    -make 10 links

    -make 5 fields.

    Could make a great new dynamic.

  • edited March 2021

    I've mentioned this a few times in the past, but an NPC third faction that mimics player behavior would really help to shake up stagnant areas. A Red Faction "agent" would spawn randomly with a random inventory of 500 items or so, and begin taking actions like deploying to nearby portals, firing bursters, throwing links, etc. until it runs out of items or cannot use any more items. Spawn frequency and inventory items could be tailored to the local player density, with NPC spawns in dead areas focusing on deploying and linking and NPC spawns in populated areas focusing on destroying player portals.

    This then opens up missions as a future feature, where the game spawns a Red Faction NPC or Red Faction field and the player has to take down their portals and fields to cleanse the area of Red Faction control.

  • True, which is part of where the 'obsession' comes in, but my response has always been "If you can't do it through the scanner, you're off the field".

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    I find this thread funny. What is the third option when the first two are legals and cheaters?

  • yay... It´s nice to see some ideas about something for the Recursed to do.. and to shake up the gameboard... The curse of the recursed... I can see the idea sneaking into your mind's :-)

Sign In or Register to comment.